December 1, 2018

To the liberal mainstream, conservatives who are young, female, or part of an ethnic minority are anthropological curiosities. They’re strange because they exist. Every day, newspapers and magazines celebrate young Americans who live their lives as experiments in redefining social, economic, familial, and biological reality. But when you stumble upon a college student like Caitlyn McKinney, who says “I don’t know how it’s liberating for women to let men see them as just another hookup. I want someone to actually think I’m special and love me”—you’ve come across a discovery on par with the mythical giant squid.

These conservative women are routinely derided on campus, and [Nancy Jo Sales of Vanity Fair] does a good job of detailing it. But maybe if the media treated them as something other than oddities, things would be a little easier for them.